Like a lot of people, I was whomped by this year’s succession of big-name summertime deaths: Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Walter Cronkite, John Hughes, Ellie Greenwich, Teddy Kennedy, etc.

So I set out to explain—first to myself and then to Vanity Fair readers—why this particular round of deaths seemed to hit us with more force than others have. The result is an essay you can read on V.F.’s Web site called “Twentieth-Century Nostalgia, or the ‘Summer of Death’ Explained.”